Impact of BTC mining Pools

[FacelessCrypto]

BTC is now a digital core asset.

Saw in some posts that large mining pools now control mining and they ensure 50% + attack not happening.

1.)As a matter of risk mitigation,if some government/non government  hackers cut of mining pools from network  through internet disruption
2.)Physical shutdown by fraud/insider work
3.)natural calamity like earthquake.

How BTC network manage 50% + attack?

I am sure  these scenarios are well taken care.
Can some one throw light on this dark topic?

[1714172013]

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[stompix]

It has been debated a thousand times already.

Mining pools do not control anything, their hashrate is created by miners with the actual gear that point their miners to that pool, while there are a few pools that have their own mining farms it's not a rule nor are they a majority
So, if a government blocks or shutdowns a pool, or a rogue worker shuts down the servers, miners ould simply switch their miners to another pool and mine there. Other than a temporary slowdown in blocks getting mined depending on the size and the reaction of miners nothing disastrous would happen.

[BrewMaster]

there are many different mining pools and each single pool owns multiple different servers in different locations. so for example when you see F2POOL has 15% of the hashrate, that is being spread among multiple servers not just one to be shut down with a natural disaster or any other thing. so for example it could be 3 different 5% servers.
if you look at their coinbases they sometimes even include the server name in it too.

additionally as it was mentioned it is miners who connect to these servers and if one went down they simply switch to another one. although this can take some time but it won't harm the bitcoin network in any major way. worst case is seeing a small rise in the time between blocks that are found until miners make the migration.

[Rifmax]

It has been debated a thousand times already.

Mining pools do not control anything, their hashrate is created by miners with the actual gear that point their miners to that pool, while there are a few pools that have their own mining farms it's not a rule nor are they a majority
So, if a government blocks or shutdowns a pool, or a rogue worker shuts down the servers, miners ould simply switch their miners to another pool and mine there. Other than a temporary slowdown in blocks getting mined depending on the size and the reaction of miners nothing disastrous would happen.

This means that as long as there are miners there is no fear of the complexes, if the pool is stopped or subjected to a technical error and the like, they can move to other swimming pools. Except in the event that most miners want to move to mining a currency other than Bitcoin, we can see a 51% attack.

[hatshepsut93]

This means that as long as there are miners there is no fear of the complexes, if the pool is stopped or subjected to a technical error and the like, they can move to other swimming pools. Except in the event that most miners want to move to mining a currency other than Bitcoin, we can see a 51% attack.

51% attack has a price tag that depends on the difficulty of the network and efficiency of hardware, which both can be summarized as electricity or money. We can't possibly know if someone would decide that executing an attack is worth it for them or not. Maybe in the future a government or a competing coin would decide to scare Bitcoiners and reorg a few last blocks, just to lower the confidence in Bitcoin. The point of PoW is not to make attacks impossible, it's to make them so expensive that it's hard to benefit from them, so even if they will occur, they will be very rare and very small in terms of reorg depth.

[stompix]

Except in the event that most miners want to move to mining a currency other than Bitcoin, we can see a 51% attack.

Why would miners want to do that?
First, bitcoin miners have only two options, BCH and BSV, they can't mine anything else other than sha256 coins and the rest of the coins are not even worth mentioning. The daily reward miners are splitting from mining these are, as we speak :
BTC: $10,417,965
BCH: $216,506
BSV: $160,565

There is no reason for miners switching en masse to any other coin.
Besides, if that would even happen it will make bitcoin more attractive to mine for others who would have turned their gear off so a few of those miners and their hahrate will be replaced.
The whole thing is actually pretty simple, for all those scenarios you have to ask yourself, why would they do that and what would they have to gain from?

[Upgrade00]

Except in the event that most miners want to move to mining a currency other than Bitcoin, we can see a 51% attack.

In addition to what has been said already, mining difficulty is adjusted every 2016 blocks (approximately 2 weeks) to keep the average block time at 10 minutes, by balancing it with the amount of computing power competing to solve a hash problem at that point in time. If more miners leave the network, the difficulty is dropped to incentivise new miners to join in, and when more mining pools are added, the difficulty rises.

[dothebeats]

This has been discussed countless of times and all you have to do is to use the search function in order to see what you're looking for.

But to satisfy the question, it's just common sense, really. No one in their right mind would spend millions of dollars in mining equipment only to put it at risk by doing something that could potentially hurt the value of what they're mining. And even if they are to move into other coins on which they could use the equipment, the loss is still great and not worth it, and the operating costs would greatly overwhelm the profits so it's not really worth it for them.

Of course, we are not discounting the possibility of a 51% attack to happen. It is possible but the reward isn't really that great. Subduing the entire bitcoin network for reverting a single transaction or overwriting the chain isn't really that much of value when bitcoin itself is worth nothing.

[Rifmax]

Except in the event that most miners want to move to mining a currency other than Bitcoin, we can see a 51% attack.

In addition to what has been said already, mining difficulty is adjusted every 2016 blocks (approximately 2 weeks) to keep the average block time at 10 minutes, by balancing it with the amount of computing power competing to solve a hash problem at that point in time. If more miners leave the network, the difficulty is dropped to incentivise new miners to join in, and when more mining pools are added, the difficulty rises.

Yes, the idea became clear to me and I thank everyone for the clarification.
I found this site via search engines: https://diff.cryptothis.com/
It displays many data:
-latest block
-current pace
-previous difficulty
-current difficulty
-next difficulty change
-previous retarget
-next retarget earliest
-next retarget latest
-projected epoch length
By analyzing the data on the site, I found that Bitcoin's difficulty is at its highest.
Is it possible to rely on this site to analyze the data?

[Wind_FURY]

OP, resize the infographic, read items no. 2, and 3. It's the full nodes that are actually securing the network, not the miners. In fact, it's the full nodes that are defining what makes a miner a miner.

The problem with mining pools is, they could have some political leverage on the network.

[pooya87]

the only real problem with mining pools is that miners don't get a vote and only the pool operator decides what to "vote" for. this doesn't seem to have caused any problems so far even during the 2017 drama and scaling fork solutions but it still is a serious issue that must be addressed by the pools and demanded by the miners.

otherwise things such as 51% attacks are not serious issues in my opinion since the mining (that is the real hashing power) is pretty decentralized already and the cost of pulling such an attack is too high already.

[seagates]

To kill a pool is not enough for 51% attack. However, if somebody (gov, for example) will have enough money they may buy hashrates and do it in other way

[jerrison]

Adding up to the contributions made. I  remember signing up for some node online or something like that, I am not too sure as i didn't get the total picture but i remember clearly that every time the node went off a wuld get a notification via email as to what nodes go down but this doesn't affect the overall tim spent on block validation. Though,  I can't tell if it has great impact as a result of that because it is just me transacting but my point is....the impact if a node or a mining pool has challenges is not a disaster.

[dansus021]

there are many different mining pools and each single pool owns multiple different servers in different locations. so for example when you see F2POOL has 15% of the hashrate, that is being spread among multiple servers not just one to be shut down with a natural disaster or any other thing. so for example it could be 3 different 5% servers.
if you look at their coinbases they sometimes even include the server name in it too.

additionally as it was mentioned it is miners who connect to these servers and if one went down they simply switch to another one. although this can take some time but it won't harm the bitcoin network in any major way. worst case is seeing a small rise in the time between blocks that are found until miners make the migration.

To be honest i just know about this.

To kill a pool is not enough for 51% attack. However, if somebody (gov, for example) will have enough money they may buy hashrates and do it in other way

and yes for now its seems impossible to do that even government. in fact what would any gov to risk their money to do this 

[ranochigo]

1.)As a matter of risk mitigation,if some government/non government  hackers cut of mining pools from network  through internet disruption
2.)Physical shutdown by fraud/insider work
3.)natural calamity like earthquake.

How BTC network manage 50% + attack?

I am sure  these scenarios are well taken care.
Can some one throw light on this dark topic?

Bitcoin doesn't have any measures to counter a scenario whereby a huge portion of the hashrate gets taken out, resulting in longer block times. Bitcoin difficulty has a limit to safeguard huge difficulty drops and it could take a few difficulty adjustments before the difficulty returns to normal.

I doubt there would be a great decrease in the resources used to execute a 51% attack. Mining operations, though concentrated within China shouldn't be concentrated within the same place. Malicious actors, can however use the hashrate to execute any attacks against Bitcoin.

[Wind_FURY]

the only real problem with mining pools is that miners don't get a vote and only the pool operator decides what to "vote" for. this doesn't seem to have caused any problems so far even during the 2017 drama and scaling fork solutions but it still is a serious issue that must be addressed by the pools and demanded by the miners.

The miners can point their mining farms to another pool. The problem was, the mining cartel were with Jihan Wu and Roger Ver, who owned the pools.

otherwise things such as 51% attacks are not serious issues in my opinion since the mining (that is the real hashing power) is pretty decentralized already and the cost of pulling such an attack is too high already.

It's the game theory, plus miners/mining pools don't enforce the rules. It's the full nodes. Will they earn more by being honest, or will they earn more by being bad-actors?

[pooya87]

The miners can point their mining farms to another pool. The problem was, the mining cartel were with Jihan Wu and Roger Ver, who owned the pools.

that's just some of the mining pools not all of them. but all pools are the same and have no option to let the miners vote which means switching to another pool wouldn't change anything as it was the case in 2017.
as i said we need a change in pool protocol which doesn't even affect bitcoin protocol and it won't need reaching consensus, fork or anything like that.

[Wind_FURY]

The miners can point their mining farms to another pool. The problem was, the mining cartel were with Jihan Wu and Roger Ver, who owned the pools.

that's just some of the mining pools not all of them. but all pools are the same and have no option to let the miners vote which means switching to another pool wouldn't change anything as it was the case in 2017.
as i said we need a change in pool protocol which doesn't even affect bitcoin protocol and it won't need reaching consensus, fork or anything like that.

TheBlueMatt's BetterHash proposal, https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/aq7u5h/video_matt_corallo_better_hashing_through/

I'm not a very technical person, but if it does its job in reducing the mining pools' role, and miners get more control back over their own hashing power, then good.

[buwaytress]

↑ Yeah actually I do recall reading Matt's BIP from this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4463840.0

Not technical myself so can't speak to viability, but this BIP does concede a lot of gaps and seems to me, Notable to me in that it didn't actually get thrown down.

The github hasn't been updated in over 2 years though. Perhaps the need hasn't approached critical level.

[Wind_FURY]

↑ Yeah actually I do recall reading Matt's BIP from this thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4463840.0

Not technical myself so can't speak to viability, but this BIP does concede a lot of gaps and seems to me, Notable to me in that it didn't actually get thrown down.

The github hasn't been updated in over 2 years though. Perhaps the need hasn't approached critical level.

I found a better source of information. I believe the community would love to read, "With BetterHash miners would control their own hashpower, and pools would just coordinate them and distribute the rewards", and the anti-Bitcoin trolls would say "it's impossible" because reasons.

https://medium.com/hackernoon/betterhash-decentralizing-bitcoin-mining-with-new-hashing-protocols-291de178e3e0

Bitcoin mining has a representation problem. Bitcoin mining pools are not Bitcoin miners, yet pools unduly signal for them. Pools run the node, construct the block, select the transactions, and can choose what fork all of their miner’s hashpower is used for. This creates a handful of incentive issues and enables some pretty undesirable political leverage. BetterHash aims to address this by giving those responsibilities back to the individual miners, and stripping the mining pools of their influence for the greater good of the network. With BetterHash miners would control their own hashpower, and pools would just coordinate them and distribute the rewards.